Hot, Sharp, and Totally In Control: Savannah Glassblowers Share Their Craft

Welcome to the in-between week, gorgeous subscribers! Please enjoy this feature article about some of our city’s most interesting artisans; another version was previously published in ARTS Southeast’s IMPACT magazine. Happiest New Year to all y’all!

The temperature outside is still hovering at 90 degrees on a summer evening in Savannah, but that’s nothing compared to the heat radiating from a storefront on Montgomery Street, where an open furnace glows just inside the door.

“It’s probably close to twenty-two hundred degrees in there,” figures glass artist Ronald Martinez as he reveals the red hot maw that holds the primal material of his craft. 

It looks like the surface of the sun, yet the proprietor of Hostess City Hot Glass retains a cool demeanor in the face of the blaze. He barely breaks a sweat as he wields a long metal rod called a punti and expertly dips it into the depths of the broiling oven, known in glassblowing parlance as the “glory hole.” (Much like the other kind, you don’t want to touch it.)